Meet the Foundation’s 2024 Gala Honorees
April 19, 2024
Each year, the Annual Gala honors individuals who have demonstrated exemplary leadership in their respective field and for their contributions to the French-American relationship. In 2024, the French-American Foundation will honor:
Raymond J. McGuire
President, Lazard
Raymond J. McGuire was named president of Lazard in April 2023. Prior to joining Lazard, Mr. McGuire held a 13-year term as Citigroup’s global head of corporate and investment banking, the longest tenure for this position in the history of Wall Street. Afterwards, he was the vice chairman of Citigroup and chairman of Citi’s banking, capital markets and advisory business. Previously, Mr. McGuire was the global co-head of mergers & acquisitions at Morgan Stanley, a managing director in the mergers & acquisitions group of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc and was one of the original members of Wasserstein Perella & Co., Inc. He started his career in 1984 in the mergers & acquisitions group of The First Boston Corporation.
Mr. McGuire is currently a member of the corporate boards of the Hess Corporation and Vornado Realty Trust. He was formerly a board member of KKR & Co., Inc. He holds leadership roles on several not-for-profit boards including: the American Museum of Natural History, the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, the Hotchkiss School, the New York Public Library, the Regional Plan Association (Chairman), the Studio Museum in Harlem (Chairman), and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He received his M.B.A. and J.D. from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School and an A.B. from Harvard College
Isabel Wilkerson (Young Leader 1994)
New York Times Bestselling Author and Pulitzer Prize Winner
Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
“Wilkerson’s work,” in the words of The American Prospect magazine, “is the missing puzzle piece of our country’s history.”
The Warmth of Other Suns won the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors, and was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. TIME Magazine named it one of the “10 Best Non-Fiction Books” of the decade. The New York Times Magazine named Warmth to its list of the best nonfiction books of all time.
Her new book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, was published in August 2020 to critical acclaim and became a Number 1 New York Times bestseller. Dwight Garner of The New York Times called it, “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.” Oprah Winfrey chose it as her 2020 Summer/Fall book club selection, declaring it “the most important book” she had ever selected.
Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her deeply humane narrative writing while serving as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal for “championing the stories of an unsung history.”
As the historian Jill Lepore observed in The New Yorker: “What Wilkerson urges, isn’t argument at all; it’s compassion. Hush, and listen.”
And for their dedicated service to French-American friendship:
Allan M. Chapin
Chairman Emeritus, French-American Foundation–United States
Allan M. Chapin began his career as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, where he became a Partner in 1976. He was a resident of their Paris office for several years and served as head of Sullivan & Cromwell’s European operations. He then became a Managing Director of Lazard Frères & Co. LLC, and subsequently a partner of Compass Partners Advisors, LLP. Throughout his career, Mr. Chapin has represented sovereign governments, investment and merchant banks, insurance companies, a wide array of industrial private sector companies, and many foreign investors, both individuals and corporations.
Mr. Chapin has served as a Director of the French-American Foundation since 1999, becoming Chairman of the Foundation in 2008. Mr. Chapin is also a Director of Fondation Claude Pompidou, a Trustee of Aperture Foundation and has served as a Director of many public and private companies in the United States and Europe. Mr. Chapin received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his LLB from Yale Law School. He served in the United States Marine Corps.
Alain Papiasse
Chairman Emeritus, French-American Foundation–France
Alain Papiasse began his career in 1973 at Crédit Lyonnais where he held various positions including Credit Analyst and Deputy Senior Banker, before being appointed Crédit Lyonnais’ Executive Vice President for the Americas in 1996. In 2002, Alain Papiasse was appointed Group Vice-President of Crédit Lyonnais, before being nominated in 2003 Vice President of Crédit Agricole Indosuez Calyon following the merger between Crédit Lyonnais and Crédit Agricole.
In January 2005, he joined BNP Paribas as a member of the Group Executive Committee and Head of Investment Solutions, the Group’s division responsible for administering customers’ savings programs and providing asset management services. In April 2009, he was appointed Head of the Corporate and Investment Banking division (CIB), and in December 2011 became Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the Group.
In 2018, Alain Papiasse was appointed Chairman of CIB to continue de development of the Bank’s relationships with large international clients, while continuing to oversee the Group’s activities in North America (Chairman of BNP Paribas USA Inc.), the United Kingdom, Luxembourg (Vice-Chairman of BGL), the GCC Region and India. In 2021, Alain Papiasse is appointed Executive Advisor to General Management while retaining the position of Chairman of CIB.
Alain Papiasse is also the Chairman of the Steering Committee of Paris-Europlace, Honorary Chairman and Chairman of the Young Leaders jury of the French-American Foundation – France.
Alain Papiasse is a graduate of three French business schools: Institut Technique de Banque, Centre d’Etudes Supérieurs de Banque and HEC business school (Executive MBA).